


Goose Egg

by Mazeem



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Concussions, M/M, Nick Fury Feels, Nick Fury Swears, Nick needs a Hug, Power-hungry Maria, Stammer, stutter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 17:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazeem/pseuds/Mazeem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a freak accident on the helicarrier knocks Nick out, he is less than impressed by Hill's attempt at a coup with the Council. Phil is less than impressed by Nick's stubborness with a concussion and a lump the size of a goose egg on his head. </p>
<p>Also stammering!Fury, because SLJ did/does, and it makes me happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goose Egg

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merle_p](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/gifts).



> This is for the rarepairfest challenge, for merle_p, and I hope she likes it despite there not being anywhere near as much fluff as I thought there was going to be, dammit.

" - down, medics to F1 section 3.6 ASAP!"

Fuck, his head hurt.

"Sir? Can you hear me?"

The voice bleated on for what felt like forever until it started making sense. He grunted assent, hoping that would shut it up so that he could go back to sleep.

"Ok, sir, that's great."

No such luck.

"How old are you, sir?"

‘Older’n you,’ he mumbled. Almost definitely. He was older than 90% of SHIELD; he'd checked it two months ago in a bit of a morbid moment.

"What month are we in?"

For fuck's sake. Shut up.

"Feb'ry," he grumbled. Stuff was starting to click back in to place. Sort of. He knew he was lying on the floor, for example, and presumably something had knocked him out. He opened his eye and squinted at the SHIELD paramedic hovering over him. Yeah, young enough to be his daughter. His grand-daughter, even, assuming some teenage breeding. 

"What do you remember about the last few minutes, sir?" she asked.

He thought for a second. Shrugged. He thought for a bit longer, long enough that the paramedic tried to speak. He waved his hand around irritably; he knew she was going to start going on about retrograde amnesia. He knew all that shit. She gave up on acquiring his cooperation and started touching his head. The headache that had blended into the background barged its way to the front again. With an icepick. 

" - period of at least two minutes, showing signs of reduced cognition - "

"I'll show you fucking reduced cognition," he muttered. He gritted his teeth and sat up. The world swam around him. His stomach swirled the other way, just for fun. 

Oh yeah, he had a nice concussion going on. All this damn babying-mother-henning fuss, though. He had better shit to be doing. He had a quick feel of his head, ignoring the resulting flash of pain. Nah, he wasn’t even bleeding. There was a solid bump already rising, but fuck that. Last time he’d had a concussion, he’d been able to see his brain in the mirror. Now he was going all fuzzy for a god damned goose egg?

Fuck that shit. 

He shook off the paramedic, who was flapping and clucking, and, ok, Nick, maybe enough chicken and egg related metaphors if you wanna convince everyone you’re thinking straight. 

“I’m f-fine,” he snarled. And then his ears caught up with his mouth. And then he froze. For one horrible moment, he wondered if he’d actually fucked his head up properly this time.

He’d knocked that on its ass nearly thirty years ago. It came back sometimes if he was drop-dead tired, or very drunk, and apparently if concussed by a fucking slip; that was all. 

Still. Just a tester. Just to … see.

“Haven’t you got anyone else to annoy, girl?” he asked. Except it came out more like: “H … H-aven’t, yyyou got anyone else to annoy, girl?”  
Well, shit. He tried to make sure that the wide-eyed look on the paramedic’s face wasn’t being echoed in his own. Come on. He could beat this. He tapped his comm. Hill? No, she'd grab control in seconds. She’d probably sent the fucking medic down in the first place. Phil? Fuck, not yet. "Romanov, sitrep." And if the ‘R’ lasted for a little longer than usual, then he doubted anyone would notice. 

"Engine failure on 1, overheating. Probable insulation issue. Stabilised, preparing to dock for repairs. Sitrep, sir?"

It took him several seconds to process her report, even though it had been delivered with admirable brevity, and one or two more to understand her question. Shit.

"Been wwww, shit, worse."

"With all due respect, sir, that really doesn't say much."

"Nnot your business." 

"Sir." Oh, the sarcasm in that could send lesser leaders frothing at the mouth. He grunted at her and lowered his hand from his ear.

It wasn’t something well-known, this. Only the agents with more than thirty years at SHIELD knew about it, and there were few enough of them. He wasn’t embarrassed. He’d just had a childhood where people associated speaking ability with cognitive ability, and treated him as such, so it wasn’t something he’d advertised. 

God, he wished for the days of static over the comms, where he could have carried on all day and just blamed it on the tech. 

But he couldn’t, so, enough sitting around.

He stood up, pushing against the wall for the initial leverage. His head throbbed, but the deck was steady under his feet and his stomach wasn’t playing the traitor either.

Back to work. 

On the main deck, he nodded at Romanov’s questioning eyebrow (it hurt like fuck, but he was the fucking best at keeping a straight face). Telling himself he was being paranoid, he checked round the room. Barton was skulking in a corner, back from his latest mission and awaiting debriefing (he’d get round to it eventually), but no Hill. He tapped her ID number into the agent locator. It came up ‘NO RESULTS’, but with the special yellow border that meant the number in question was still onboard, in one of the secret areas. 

He caught Barton’s eye; ‘Hill in a call?’ His signing was a mangled mess of ASL, military signals and a smattering of Makaton from the new receptionist, but for simple things it was effective enough. Barton’s sign for Hill was infamous throughout SHIELD anyway; ASL for ‘hill’ combined with the army sign for either ‘danger area’ or ‘enemy spotted’. 

Barton looked surprised, but obligingly signed back, ‘WSC, sir. As soon as we stabilised.’

The fuck?

He spun on his heel and strode off. He knew where she’d be; there was only one room secure enough to take a Council call in. He also knew that the sharp turn made his vision go funny with pain, but that could wait. He’d take a couple of pills later, once he’d figured out what the fuck was going on.

Sure enough, when he fumbled his code into the door and pushed it open when it slid too slowly, there she was. Standing in front of the screens like she was supposed to be there. 

“Oi, Hill!” It wasn’t a shout, exactly, but he made damned sure his voice sliced into theirs. Anger did its good old job on his speech; fluent as he could ever wish for. “Last time I checked, this wasn’t in your job description.”

She swung like a snake, expression momentarily blank with shock. “Director! I … are you all right?”

“I had a banged head, Hill, not a fucking stroke; why wasn’t I informed about this?” He flung his arm out towards the screens, where the Council sat silently.

She jutted out her chin. “Because when the call came in I was told that you were semi-conscious down in F1!”

“I’d had a bang, I went dizzy for a second. We’ve all had it. Why didn’t you put them on hold for ten minutes? Or even five, to reassess the situation?” He held her stare, watched it flicker. He knew what she was avoiding, because she didn’t understand it; his speech. The report she had doubtless received from the paramedic had painted a nastier picture of his fluency than what she was now subjected to. Her confusion would almost be funny, if it didn’t hit too many old sore spots. 

“There are protocols for emergency replacement of the Director by the Assistant,” he told her, gently, tailoring his voice for the listening Council. “Specific tasks to undertake.” 

His voice said “You idiot, look at what you did wrong, you didn’t go through the right channels or adequately check your intel’. He made damn sure that his body language and expression were screaming out the true message of ‘Back the fuck off, bitch, this is still mine and I’m still here.’ That part leaked over into his last, sarcastic, line; “Not just shutting yourself in a secure room with the big bosses.”

At last her gaze dropped. She nodded crisply, and enunciated a clear, “Yes sir, it won’t happen again, sir,” for the benefit of the waiting screens, before barrelling past him.

He turned to face the Council. Had a moment of chilling fear – but again, old habits; playing a character did the trick just as well as anger. He always played a character while talking to the Council. Generally a character of someone who gave a shit. 

It was nothing taxing or longwinded; they had heard of the helicarrier’s difficulty and had fretted that it had been sabotage, or worse a direct attack. They didn’t actually care about the helicarrier, just the possibility of a threat from left field. Nick knew it and he knew they knew that he knew it, but he gave them the intel anyway, squinting through the occasional spot in his vision to see the screens. Trying not to think about his head because every time he did his tongue would knot up again. 

By the time he left the room, his head felt like a giant fist was squeezing it. Any sudden movement made him gasp. He knew there was a rarely used old storage room just at the other end of the corridor, so he hurried there. 

He couldn’t take the thought of lights, so fumbled around in the dark until he felt something flat enough to sit on. He sank down onto it, leant back against the wall and put his head gingerly into his hands, avoiding the large swelling. The pain had reached the stage where all he could do was shiver and make tiny stifled noises. 

“Nick!”

Numbly, he shifted his weight enough to tap his comm. He would have left anyone else to rot right now, but not Phil, worried enough to first-name him over the unsecured comm.

“Are you all right?”

“Mm.”

“Tasha just filled me in; said you’d been knocked out, groggy. Said you were … not speaking quite right?”

“Mm.” Nick answered the not-quite question. Listened to the faint, swooshing sounds of Phil’s footsteps as he left his office at a run.

“Then apparently you went after Hill! Talk to me, Nick!”

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. 

“Concussion, fucker of a headache. Hill’s a power-hungry cunt, but we knew that. I’m in the old storage room, sublevel 6.” His voice was absolutely monotone and absolutely steady; he could feel the stammer pushing and pushing but it was as if everything in his body was conspiring to keep him as still as possible. 

“I’ll be there in six.”

Nick had meant to keep track of time, because Phil’s punctuality was one of their oldest jokes, but he drifted off into what felt like the first stages of sleep, hunched over on a box in a dark cupboard, keeping himself in balance. 

“Nick.” Phil’s voice was so soft he barely caught it. Felt it, though, when Phil gently lifted his head up, taking all its weight as he pressed a glass of water with a soluble painkiller into his hands. He just about managed to hold it and drink it ok, then somehow he ended up with his head on Phil’s lap. 

It was a strong, fast-acting painkiller, and he definitely dozed off that time, so the next time he heard Phil’s voice he actually felt like he could respond to it. 

“Feeling better?”

He sat up, shoulder to shoulder with Phil. “Yeah, m-much.” He swore at himself. Phil raised his eyebrows. Nick could tell even in the dim light; he could see Phil’s forehead crinkle right up. 

“I wondered if that was what they meant by speech problems.” The pattern of forehead wrinkles shifted; a smile. One of those ones that would normally be followed by a light, fond swat to his cheek or head. “You had them worried about a bleed on your brain.”

“Hill wwwwould’ve f’king loved me to be b-bleeding from the b-brain.” 

Phil snorted. “Yeah, probably.” He put a hand on Nick’s knee. Nick automatically took it and squeezed it; that was Phil’s nervous tic. “Do you reckon you can get it back under control? If not, you know I thought up some ways you could deal with it at work about ten years ago, just in case, I’m sure they’re still in the loft somewhere.”

Nick smiled and huffed a laugh through his nose.

“Yeah, I’ll have it rrreined in again by tomorrow, I b-bet.” To demonstrate, he breathed in deeply and spoke on the exhale: “Just a bit of a shake-up; nothing reorganised.” He squeezed Phil’s hand again, then, on impulse, found the white curve of his cheek in the dim light and cupped it, guiding their mouths together in a brief, comfortable, comforting kiss. The whites of Phil’s eyes flashed in surprise, then he responded. 

“P-lus,” Nick pointed out, leaning back against the wall again, “the amount of shit in th-at loft? You c-could be searching for another ten years.”

Phil grinned. That one made his eye wrinkles go, too. “We could always clear it, in your time off.”

“Time off?”

“Time off.” Phil’s tone was resolute. 

“One day?”

“Three at least.”

“Fuck’s sake, Phil.”

“That’s why you love me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think. :) All opinions welcome!


End file.
